Many display systems use spatial light modulators that receive a beam of light from a light integrating rod. The light integrating rod takes a non-uniform beam of light and converts it into uniformly distributed light. Such integrating rods are often used in deformable micro-mirror devices (DMD). As DMDs become smaller and smaller, the size of integrating rods also reduces. Although the light received by the integrating rod is not uniform, it is important that the light received by the integrated rod is focused to an input aperture of the integrating rod. If the input light is not focused, light is lost in the display system, resulting in less than optimal display quality. As the size of integrating rods shrinks, it becomes more and more critical to have proper focus of the beam received by the integrator rod. Further, many display systems utilize a sequential color recapture (SCR) aperture, which requires even greater precision in the focus of light achieved by the SCR aperture.
Although it is critically important to focus the light received by the integrating rod aperture, current methods can be both time consuming and less than effective. For example, current methods generally involve mounting the integrating rods aperture on the rod, which is then fixed to remaining portions of the projector system. Then the lamp is brought in and selectively adjusted until a desirable amount of light is received by the integrating rod aperture. This approach suffers several disadvantages. First, it is time consuming, requiring a skilled technician to accurately align the lamp to the integrating rod aperture. Further, the aperture may be damaged as light rays impinge upon it during this alignment process. An alternative method relies on tight tolerances between constituent portions of the projector system, assuming alignment will occur naturally. However, this alignment method often results in less than optimal retransmission through the integrating rod.